The “summer slide” refers to what can happen to kids’ brains when they are idle during the summer months. Experts from the National Summer Learning Association estimate that the equivalent of about two month’s instruction time can be lost if children don’t keep their brains active during that break from school. Reading is a great way to keep the brain active and combat the summer slide. To help, we have some fun things planned at the Washington-Centerville Public Library to get kids excited to read this summer!

We’re kicking off our annual Summer Reading Club today, and it will run until July 31. If you’re not familiar with how our club works, it’s really easy and REALLY FUN! Registration can be done in person at the Woodbourne Library, Centerville Library, or online. Kids entering preschool – 5^th grade can join our children’s club, where they get a “gamecard” to track their reading (by hours or by number of books read—it’s their choice). Along the way, there are prizes to win, and each child who completes the children’s club will earn a book! For babies and toddlers, we have gamecards that are filled with fun early literacy activities for you and your little one to do together, and each baby or toddler to finish the club earns a board book to keep!

During the summer, we also have tons of great programs for the whole family to enjoy. Some of these programs include: Happy Birthday, Very Hungry Caterpillar!, Fun with Mike Hemmelgarn, Family Mission to the Moon, Curiosity Dome, and Wild About Wildlife! Check out all of our programs here.

In addition, starting June 3, each week we’ll have a different theme for our craft centers located in the children’s room at the Centerville and Woodbourne Libraries. You and your kids can stop by anytime we’re open to make cool crafts and color our coloring sheets.

Finally, check out our new summer storytime schedule here. Registration is not necessary for any summer storytimes. Feel free to come whenever you can!

We’re looking forward to seeing lots of excited readers at the library this summer!

The post A Universe of Stories! appeared first on Dayton Parent Magazine.

The “summer slide” refers to what can happen to kids’ brains when they are idle during the summer months. Experts from the National Summer Learning Association estimate that the equivalent of about two month’s instruction time can be lost if children don’t keep their brains active during that break from school. Reading is a great way to keep the brain active and combat the summer slide. To help, we have some fun things planned at the Washington-Centerville Public Library to get kids excited to read this summer!

We’re kicking off our annual Summer Reading Club today and will run until July 28. If you’re not familiar with how our club works, it’s really easy and REALLY FUN! Registration can be done in person at the Centerville Library or online. Kids entering preschool – 5^th grade can join our children’s club, where they get a “gamecard” to track their reading (by hours or by number of books read—it’s their choice). Along the way, there are prizes to win, and each child who completes the children’s club will earn a book! For babies and toddlers, we have gamecards that are filled with fun early literacy activities for you and your little one to do together, and each baby or toddler to finish the club earns a board book to keep!

During the summer, we also have tons of great programs for the whole family to enjoy. Some of these programs include: Stories in Motion with Dayton Ballet II, W.A.T.E.R. Safety with Goldfish Swim School, Fun with Mike Hemmelgarn, and Outdoor Survival Skills with the Centerville-Washington Park District! Check out all of our programs here.

In addition, each week we’ll have a different theme for our craft centers located in the children’s room at the Centerville Library. You and your kids can stop by anytime we’re open to make cool crafts and color our coloring sheets.

Finally, check out our new summer storytime schedule here. Registration is not necessary for any summer storytimes. Feel free to come whenever you can!

We’re looking forward to seeing lots of excited readers at the library this summer!

The post Camp Read S’More! appeared first on Dayton Parent Magazine.

Do you want to know how you can best prepare your child to be successful in kindergarten? Are you wondering what school is even like these days for a kindergarten student? Do you wish you could talk to someone who had these answers and more?

You’re in luck! Monday, January 29, at the Centerville Library, we will be holding our annual Ready, Set, Kindergarten! program. Each year, we have a panel of local kindergarten teachers speak about ways in which you can get your soon-to-be kindergarten student ready for school. We’ll also have a librarian on hand to talk about some of the library’s resources that can help you grow your little learner. There will be plenty of time at the end for questions. If you have a little one who will be starting kindergarten in the next year or two, you don’t want to miss this program!

What: Ready, Set, Kindergarten!

When: 7:00-8:30 PM, Monday, January 29, 2018

Where: Centerville Library – 111 W. Spring Valley Rd. Centerville, OH 45458

The post Ready, Set, Kindergarten! appeared first on Dayton Parent Magazine.

Each year, our Children’s Department at the Washington-Centerville Public Library puts together a list of some our favorite books from the current year that would make great gifts for children. If you’re in need of holiday gift ideas for the little readers in your life, check out this year’s list here!

The post Need Gift Ideas? appeared first on Dayton Parent Magazine.

Reading aloud to your child lays the foundation for literacy development and is widely regarded as the single most important activity for reading success. Not only does it allow a connection to be made between the written and spoken word, but it also serves as a demonstration of fluent reading. Even as your child starts reading on her own, reading aloud to her is still extremely beneficial. Since she can listen to more difficult books than she can read, it exposes her to more complex ideas and vocabulary than she’d get by reading on her own.

If you’re struggling to find time to read to your child as much as you’d like, try one of our library’s most amazing (and free!*) resources, TumbleBook Library. This website, filled with tons of picture books and short chapter books, allows your child to follow along with the words of a book as it’s being read to her. While it’s not quite as cozy as that one-on-one time with mom or dad, listening to a book this way is a great alternative on those busy days!

*The Washington-Centerville Public Library subscribes to TumbleBooks, which allows you to use it for free! This means that you need to use the link on our website (rather than going to the TumbleBook Library website directly). Just go to https://kids.wclibrary.info/read/ and click on the Tumblebooks icon to get started. You’ll need to enter your name and library card number, and then you’re off and running!

The post Can You Say FREE?! appeared first on Dayton Parent Magazine.

Reading to your children is the absolute best way to prepare your little ones for later reading success. Research has shown, however, that the way in which you read to your children is just as important as the frequency with which you read to them.

Dialogic reading is a proven-effective method of reading in which adults prompt children with questions and engage them in discussions while reading to them. It encourages parents to go beyond just reading the words on the page. By asking questions, expanding on children’s responses, encouraging them to retell stories, and restating the names, objects, and events in the book, dialogic reading helps young children build and reinforce the basic language and literacy skills that will make them successful readers down the road.

For more information on dialogic reading and a step-by-step guide on how you can try it with your children, check out this article by Grover J. Whitehurst, whose research is the basis for dialogic reading.

The post Dialogic Reading: How to Make Book-Sharing More Effective appeared first on Dayton Parent Magazine.

All parents would love to have endless amounts of time to sit and read to their kids, right? Unfortunately, life gets in the way and can make time for frequent one-on-one reading with your little ones hard to find. Fear not, frazzled parents! We’ve got a couple tricks up our sleeves at the library that can help you during those times when you want your kids to be reading, but you don’t have the time to read to them:

VOX Books are our newest collection at the library, and they’ve been flying off of the shelves as parents and kids discover them. VOX Books are all-in-one read-along audiobooks for kids. Kids can listen to books aloud or plug in headphones to listen on their own. The books are read in their entirety, and special sounds are added in to let kids know when to turn the pages. We have a growing selection of these fun and informative books. An added bonus with the fiction titles is that the author is the one narrating the book. Who doesn’t want Mo Willems to read them a story?!

If you can’t make it in to the library, TumbleBook Library is another great resource. TumbleBooks is an online collection of books and activities for kids. For younger children, it includes read-along storybooks that even highlight the sentence being read so that kids can follow along. This is great for emerging readers! TumbleBook Library does require a paid subscription, but if you have a library card, you can access it for FREE from our website!

Nothing will ever replace the special moments and bonds that are made between parents and children during reading time together, but VOX Books and TumbleBook Library are great alternatives when that’s just not possible!

The post Reading Assistance for Busy Parents appeared first on Dayton Parent Magazine.

I’ve been reading a book recently called Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain by Dana Suskind, MD. It focuses on three key ways in which parents can interact with their children to help their child’s brain development: tune in, talk more, and take turns (the “Three Ts”). The book goes into great detail about each of the Three Ts and provides much insight on what’s happening inside the heads of our littlest learners. It also provides tons of nuggets of advice for parents. Here’s one: